[kasey_junk]

People claim this all the time but is there any actual evidence? It would be one of the worst possible grifts of all time.

[zymhan]

I know right can you imagine just deploying patches written by some person that wrote the patches for an interview test?

I'll take that module that auto-completes code with Stack Overflow answers first, thank you very much.

[hpcjoe]

I gave 4 examples of this in an above comment. Yes, it happens. Yes, its wrong. No, people and companies don't care.

At the end of the day, this is what sucked the optimism out of me at my previous company. We had lots of people trying to steal from us. Even after I closed it down, I had two people in particular, ask me to help them design something, or give them detail domain/design knowledge, for free.

Yes, it happens. Far too often. Makes people like me jaded.

[mixmastamyk]

"Fire your worst customers," and don't look back.

[unstuckdev]

I think it's more common in creative fields. Companies even solicit free design work (for example) under the guise of contests.